We have spent the last three days in Sonoma Valley and Yosemite National Park. They were both amazing experiences. I'll first start in Sonoma. As Sonoma is home to about 450 small and family run wineries, we didn't know where to go and thanks to google we found ourselves in a small town called Healdsburg. It is located in the Northern part of the Sonoma County and is well known for being one of North California's wine capitals. The main town strip is lined with delicious cafe's, each selling local wine and offering wine tastings. We also came across Bear Republic Brewery which is tucked off the side strip in Healdsburg. Michael wanted to spend the whole day, so instead, he bought a t-shirt.
Anyway, we hoped in our cars, wine tasting tokens in hand (complimentary of the visitors center) and headed to Dry Creek Rd. It is probably one of my most favourite roads in the whole of the US, and I have been to the strip. The road is about 9 miles long and is lined with wineries. We have tried some California wine on our trip, but nothing much has stood out. They have some different wines here like Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and a few others and by the end of the day we knew we liked the Zinfandel wine. We went to four wineries all up and they were all so delicious. Our favourite place was called Dutcher Crossing Winery, which you can only by from the cellar door or delivered to your US adders. Closely followed was Ferrari-Carano Vineyard and Winery. I'm not much of a white wine lover, but some of their Sauvignon Blanc's were delicious! If you ever plan a trip to Napa or Sonoma and love red wines, then this is your street.
Anyway, from there we headed to Yosemite National Park which is about 4 hours east. We didn't see Yosemite Sam, nor did we see any black bears, but we did see some more deers and plenty of squirrels. Yosemite was amazing. It is huge. There are 4 different regions you can go to throughout the park. You could get lost with about 800 miles of hiking tracks to choose from in a 1,200 square mile area. We picked a combination of waterfalls and scenic rim views. We headed down to the Valley floor on the first day and did a 12km hike. It was pretty intense. We hiked from a 4000ft elevation to 6000ft in about 5km. We did what is called the 'mist trail' which involves hiking up to the top of two waterfalls. The waterfalls aren't in full swing at the moment, but they were amazing and would be stunning in spring as the ice melts.
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| Vernal Falls, Yosemite |
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| Top of Nevada Falls, Yosemite |
The second day we headed further up and went to Glacier Point. It has an elevation of 8000ft and we hiked about 9km to two amazing views of Yosemite Valley and panoramic views of pretty much the whole Yosemite area. While we were at Galcier point we saw some people preparing for hang-gliding. I couldn't imagine jumping off an 8,000ft elevation into the valley. The views would be amazing, but it would be pretty scary!
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| Yosemite Valley |
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| Yosemite Valley |
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| View of half dome, from Sentinal Dome hike |
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| On top of Taft Point, Yosemite |
That is pretty much our last few days. We are currently in a stop-over night in Sacramento, which, fun fact, is the capital of California. We are off to Chico tomorrow which is a place I'm sure a lot of you may not know, but appreciate. It's the Sierra Nevada Brewery and Michael is super excited about it. We are doing a brewery tour in the afternoon, followed by Beer. Our next big stop is Redwood National Park which we will get too on our Monday.
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